Filth

by Irvine Welsh

  – Sure George, I say.

  Get them in you daft auld cunt.

  – He wis polis awright. Polis through and through. Ah loved that dug, n that dug loved me.

  – It wis a relationship, I tell him considerately. – A full and loving relationship between man and beast.

  George focuses on me in bemused shock. – It wisnae like . . . we wirnae like . . .

  – No no no . . . I didn’t mean . . . I tell him, – I mean . . . suppose that aliens landed. Aliens fae outer space, I endeavour to explain. – They would only see two species of Earthling . . . I mean they wouldnae see like . . . Homo sapiens and canine. Aw they would see was two Earthlings . . . it’s the relationship . . . I raise my near-empty glass in the hope that this sad cunt will see through his selfish grief and hit the bar, – To Earthlings! I toast.

  He raises his glass slightly and mumbles some distracted rubbish which I don’t catch.

  I stand up and think about getting them in. I decide against it and leave the wretched old fool. I flag down a taxi and I’m just about to say Colinton, but I feel Toal’s drawer key with the change in my pocket and I get a surge of excitement and decide to take it to Stockbridge. It’s a short hop, so I get out and walk through the dark streets up towards our headquarters.

  There are still a few lights on, but the place is almost deserted. The cleaners are in, but they’re on our floor. They have keys which fit all the office doors, which I obtained copies of some years ago. I used to fuck a clerical bird across the desk after hours. Maureen. She got married and left. No a bad ride, pretty game.

  I take the back staircase, emerging on the records floor corridor. I go inside, open the drawer and take Toal’s hard copy manuscript and stick it in my document wallet. Then I go into the hard disk and erase the file: ‘DARK/wks’ from the C-drive, making sure it’s the correct one. I find the A-drive disks and have to search through them in order to make sure I’m erasing the right ones. He’s done two and called them different names from the C-drive ones, ‘BOB/wks’ and ‘CITY/wks’. They get the same treatment.

  I leave the spare key inside the drawer and head off. I hear the hoovers of the cleaner and as I pass downstairs I look through the glass of the office door, shuddering to see lnglis and Drummond. Those cunts, putting in a nightshift. They’re obviously going through the clerical procedures involved in tracing the hammer. They’ll never find where it came from, the sad bastards. I think I can hear Gillman’s voice as well.

  Then my heart skips a beat. I hear somebody coming up the back staircase.

  I get down on my hands and knees and start to crawl under the glass section of the partition. I’d love to eavesdrop on what this motley crew are talking about and as I creep along under the windowspace I’m sure I hear someone say ‘Robertson’ but if I don’t move whoever’s coming up the back stair will find me squatting here in the corridor. I’m trembling with excitement and I’m almost three sheets and the thing is to get out undetected.

  The windowspace becomes the wall, and I stand up and strut down the corridor.

  Fuck!

  I can hear voices coming towards me, and a cleaner with a mop and pail comes on to the first floor behind me. I jump into the shadows and turn towards the front staircase. I descend stealthily, then I duck into one of the toilets on the landing at the bend of the stairs to compose myself. After trembling in the cubicle for a few minutes, I venture outside. The coast is clear. I’m out the door. Thank God we’ve no security here.

  I can’t believe my luck as the building recedes and I skip down to Stockbridge and up into the city, my feet light over the hard, compacted snow. I fall once and laugh, lying on my arse as it starts coming down again, the beautiful, perfect white flakes. I get up and walk for a while, singing in the snow.

  . . . though we sometimes go down we kin ey go back up . . .

  The numbing wind is kicking up and after a while I can’t compete so I flag down a taxi back to Colinton. I can’t stop laughing in the cab. The driver turns around and says, – You’ve had a good night mate!

  – Certainly have, I agree.

  We blether away about fitba and Hearts and how Stronach should hang up his boots. I’m almost tempted to give him a tip, but think better of it, drinking in the stoical disappointment on his face as I count out the exact fare.

  Ladies Night

  Sunday morning and I get the News Of The Screws and have a quick scan at the Saturday night telly I video’d, after I get the fire lit. At least I managed to keep the coal deliveries going. This is one thing I ken how tae dae in my hoose: tae make a real fire. Carole could never dae that, she always left it tae me. I’ve tried to handwash one pair of flannels in the sink using washing-up liquid and I’ve hanged them on a collapsible clothes-horse in front of the fire to dry.

  The telly is fuckin pish as usual, but I’ve always preferred working at night. That dog’s on the box with three rides who need fucked. One of them bears such a strong resemblance to that wee Annalise bird I fucked at the lay-by before we went on holiday that I almost expect her to have a Scottish accent. Turns out she’s Lesley from London. The fuckin questions get on my tits. I know what I would use for the Blind Date questions:

  No. 1: If I were to ask you for a gam, would you gie it to me?

  No. 2: Do you take it up the arsehole?

  No. 3: Have you ever eaten the worm-ridden faeces of a non-uniformed police officer while he’s working you with a vibrator?

  That’s the real questions the nation wants to fuckin well hear.

  It’s so tedious that I take a look at Total’s script.

  EXT. STREET. NEW YORK CITY. THURSDAY NIGHT, 3AM.

  A solitary man is nervously walking down a darkened, cold, deserted street. He gives the odd furtive glance backwards as if he is concerned that he is being followed. He heads down towards the waterfront with the lights of Brooklyn Bridge visible ahead of him. Someone shouts and he turns around. As this happens, we see, in slow-motion, a youth with a crowbar running towards the

  Fuck off Total! What a load of shite! The cunt’s just ripping off whatever current bastard case we’re supposed to be solving and setting it in New York. That’s no fuckin screenwritin!

  I rip off the title page and the first two and stick them in the fire I’ve built. The last copy of Toal’s masterwork and here it fuckin well goes! I decide to get down to some real writing and try the News Of The Screws crossword.

  This crossword’s getting harder every fuckin day. The rings of Saturn . . . the rings of Uranus . . .

  The ring of that fuckin phone.

  And I left the machine off.

  It’s always a mistake to answer the phone at hame. It’s a weakness, a polisman’s weakness: nosiness. I needed to find out who it is and it’s fuckin Toal. This means that I’ll have to watch what I put on the OTA 1–7. He’s giving us grief. He’s not impressed with two and a half pages of a progress report, I mean, how could a prodigious writer like Toal be? So he’s blabbering on about the topped coon, this Efan Wurie (he’s a Effen Worry tae me awright), how the Sambo-boy’s auld man’s sent a letter to the Home Secretary who’s nipped the Chief Constable’s heid who’s nipped Niddrie’s heid, who’s nipped Toal’s and now he’s nipping mine. This is why he’s taken Drummond off the case as lead officer: too many big guns firing off in all directions for a lightweight. I feel like asking him, But what about D.S. Amanda Drummond, what about her pivotal role in this investigation? Surely she proved a capable enough team leader for the Home Secretary to directly address such concerns to her? Ha!

  But I can’t speak up. Toal. He’s giving me grief, but only because he has grief . . .

  All I can think about is that boy’s skull, bashed in, the way his head was caved in and how it wasn’t like a heid at all, just like a broken silly puppet face, about how when you destroy something, when you brutalise it, it always looks warped and disfigured and slightly unreal and unhuman and that’s what makes it easier for you to go on brutalising it,
go on fucking it and hurting it and mashing until you’ve destroyed it completely, proving that destruction is natural in the human spirit, that nature has devices to enable us to destroy, to make it easier for us; a way of making righteous people who want to act do things without the fear of consequence, a way of making us less than human, as we break the laws . . .

  . . . but she was wrong. Wrong to do that; to try and prove something to me. Or try to get me to prove something to her about how I feel for her. I’ll never turn her in though. Never. But she was wrong, she shouldn’t have fuckin done it.

  Toal’s stopped rabbiting. He’s looking for us to respond. We tell him what we have said in the report, that we have sent Dougie Gillman on liaison duty with the Forum on Community Relations and sweet darling Mandy Drummond has been given the task of overseeing the clerical procedures of tracing the hammer.

  We, I, on the other hand, am engaged in active surveillance of the enemy. The ned enemy.

  – Lean on these fuckers, these silly wee fascist cunts, Toal’s telling us. I wonder if he’s sussed out the missing manuscript yet. Poor Toalie boy.

  Toal of course is the enemy. This is stark crystal clear. We were compelled to engage with this man, as outright opposition would have aroused his suspicion, but our strategy of quietly finding his weaknesses, then undermining him has paid dividends. We must continue to put our distaste for him to the side in order to keep achieving this.

  We have been negligent in our duties. Other matters have dealt with too much of our time. Possession by hoors. Running after witches. Containment. Control. We have to break free. We

  I go into Toal’s office and he’s looking destroyed. The thing is I can’t seem to derive any pleasure from it. Something is wrong. With me. I’m feeling out of sorts. I must cut back on the drink. It’s fuckin well killing me.

  I’d been thinking that I’d perhaps be in a strong position to blackmail Toal into supporting my promotion application as I have the only copy of his draft screenplay, albeit minus the first few pages. After shop-talk on the fruitless Wurie case, he says, – It’s not been a good time for me Brother Robertson.

  Does Toal suspect that I’ve half-inched his screenplay or is he just playing the craft card to cast the net? – How so Brother Toal? I ask haughtily.

  – I’ve lost some files, he points at the machine on his desk.

  – Computer files?

  – Yes.

  – I’m not a great fan of new technology. That’s computer files for ye. They’re a bit like brother freemasons in the craft: it doesn’t matter how full of shit they are, you have to remember to back them up.

  Toal smiles painfully, then looks thoughtful for a bit. Then he says something which confuses but encourages me. – Often brothers are being supported in ways which they cannot imagine. Then he says, wearily, – If you hear anything Bruce, let me know. I’d appreciate it.

  – You mean with files and things . . . I ask, playing the daft laddie to give myself a bit of space.

  – Anything, he says sniffily.

  The conversation with Toal has made me feel uneasy. What should have been a fucking triumph has a bitter and hollow aftertaste. I can’t think why. Anyway, the day seems to be drifting away from my control. I keep thinking about . . . stupid things.

  Stacey. Christmas. Carole.

  Fuck all that shite. She’s fuckin poisonous. A danger to herself and to other people. Well, I have news for her, and for Mister Toal, and for Mister Niddrie: you don’t fuck about with Bruce Robertson. Same rules apply. My methods are my methods are my methods.

  You think the day cannae get any worse. Wrong! Things can always get worse, it seems as if they now can’t fucking improve. A social ratchet, that’s my life. What’s a ratchet? A wee bit bigger than a moose’s shit.

  But it is getting worse Bruce, my sweet, sweet friend, because she’s here, waiting for us, here, outside the fucking station. – Bruce, she says, as we pretend not to see her and go to the car. That snakelike hiss of a voice. Broossssss . . .

  Brooosssss

  Let’s turn off the gassss Brooossss . . . no, that’s Chrisss-ie. Thisssss isss Shhhir-ley. Mind Ssstacey’s Jungle Book video. That sssnake that used tae sing, Trusssst in me . . . what wis that cunt’s name again? Sheer Khan? Naw, that wissss the fuckin tiger. That’s right, that’s right, that’s right, that’s right . . . Tiger Feet. Mud. Or Les Gray and Mud as they became.

  – Hello Shirley. We cannot talk here. I shall see you in the pub on the corner in ten minutes.

  – But Bruce . . . she says, her face twisting in that plea for clemency, but there can be no clemency, there is only the law which must be obeyed. The same goes for social laws, the ones we make in our daily interactions. She is trying to renegotiate the contract between us. The contract stipulates that there will be no fucking about with us in our private and personal life and this fuckin contract is being broken. No, no and no again!

  Brooossss

  – I repeat, we can-not talk here. Listen, because I’m not going to say this again, I kid you not. I’ll see you in the pub in ten minutes. My eyes glint in the sunlight which insipidly tries to negate the chill of a Scottish winter, blocking the hoor from my vision. I turn sharply away and out of the car park, stealing off down the road.

  Ten minutes my arse, I can hear her following me, her creepy footsteps. I’m hoping nobody sees us. She doesn’t realise that she’s giving those cunts weapons to destroy me; cunts like Toal, Lennox, Gillman, Drummond and the like. Her presence in my company could, in the wrong hands, be a lethal weapon.

  Tough Scottish cop Bruce Rabertson could hear the footsteps of the broad behind him as her heels clicked the tarmac. He thought of the legs attached to those heels and that Mecca they led to. No matter how many times he made that particular pilgrimage, Rabertson always reckoned that another visit was in order. He could hear her breathing heavily, her pursuit of him causing her heavy breasts to rise and fall, those warm and inviting mammaries that Rabertson knew so well . . . there ye go Toal, ya cunt that ye are! That’s fuckin screenwritin! Any cunt can fuckin well dae that shite!

  That’s the right idea though that Toal’s got. Get as many voices in your head as you can and hide in the crowd. We’ve got loads of them. Probably as many as there are worms eating away inside us. There’s some billboards telling us to drink Tennents Lager: we can do that! None for the purple tin but: they know it’s not a recreational drug, any more than smack or crack is. There’s another one telling us to test drive a new Fiat Uno. We can do that; at the same time as the Tennents if ye want!

  Ha!

  Gotcha!

  Wrong!

  Come taste the bacon baby, come taste that muthafuckin bacon!

  We go into the bar of the Rag Doll and get up some drinks. We are thinking that we should perhaps be more annoyed at this stupid cow than we actually are. Actually.

  Actually!

  Shirley is a funny bitch; fucking desperate for it. Everything’s fake about her, but with her skill at applying the make-up she can approximate how she used to look, or at any rate her make-up colludes with our hormones into making us believe she approximates it. After we’ve blown our muck, all we can see is her as a caricature of a former self.

  Muthafuckin ho, that’s all she is. Dat ho is desprit to taste di bay-con.

  This gets us thinking of all the times we’ve, I’ve fucked her over the years. Loads n loads n loads n loads n loads. – We should be able to do things for each other, we, I once told her. – The laddies are at school, so’s wee Stacey. You’re fed up, ah’m fed up. We should be able to have a wee bit of harmless fun. Only get one life, eh.

  All those years of deceit. We turn round and see her. She reminds us more of Carole now that she’s getting older. She was always heavier built than Carole.

  Come taste that bacon baby . . .

  She opens her mouth and there is a noise in our head, and we, I, we see her mouth going oval-shaped and pleading and in our head we hear the messag
e: Broooosssss

  She’s getting it. They’re all fucking well getting it.

  She is telling us something as we sit at the table in the pub. The bar is almost empty. The sun streams in across the lino. We see a report of a game on the back page of the Evening News. I wonder if Stronach was playing. We nod over to a uniformed spastic who comes in and says something to the publican. A uniformed spastic with a loose mouth in the canteen and the malevolent ears of the vicious gossiping faggot Inglis tuned in to every salacious tit-bit spewed from those embittered lips. Time to go.

  – We can’t talk here, I say, and we call for a taxi. Thankfully it takes no time to arrive and we get in it with her. The engine and the heat and her perfume make my flannels start to rise and my mouth is on hers silencing that whingeing racket as I force my tongue as far into her gob as I can, poking it into every crevice. The taxi shudders to a halt and we are back at our place.

  Gotcha!

  I, we . . . I take her to our unmade and smelly bed, full of stale spunk and crumbs. I’m straight down on her cunt with my mouth, slurping, devouring. It tastes of strawberries. The soap. She’s loving it but will not take my stiff cock in her mouth, my scaly, flaking, stinking cock, and she’s pushing it away from her face and pulling at it and we are about to come so I pull away and go around and stick our cock up her, and she is disappointed as she doesn’t want the rancid prick that Rossie has been unable to cure inside her but she wants to come and we’re fucking hard and we come and she does too, and it’s the same rules.

  The same rules. She’s lying chuffed and dreamy, she’s had her dose of cock. Her sister’s man. She’s fucking well won; she’s debased us again. We are empty.

  Brooossss

  We’re in bed, sitting up in bed, and I’m lighting a fag and saying: – Mind the first time ah rode you?

  – That’s a horrible way of putting it! she pouts obstinately.